The Importance of Indoor Air Filtration

When homeowners consider their indoor comfort, they often think about the temperature of their home, and maybe even the efficiency of their HVAC system. These are important factors to consider. However, an often overlooked aspect of indoor comfort is the quality of the indoor air.

According to an article from WebMD, your indoor air quality could actually be worse than the outdoor air quality, especially in the spring. Without proper filtration, you are exposing yourself and your family to contaminants such as dirt, pollen, pet dander, and even pollutants like mold, bacteria, smoke, and car exhaust.

How Does This Affect Me?

If you have family members that suffer from allergies or asthma, these pollutants can aggravate symptoms. Bad indoor air quality could even affect seemingly healthy people. Airborne pollutants can cause headaches, dry eyes, fatigue, respiratory problems, etc. This is particularly disadvantageous for children, the elderly, and anyone with existing health issues.

What Can I Do?

There are a number of products and services that can help improve your indoor air quality. Air filtration systems are a good place to start. These systems are sorted by MERV, which stands for Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value. This rating determines how tightly woven the mesh in the air filter is. The more tightly woven the mesh—and the higher the MERV rating is—means smaller contaminants can be captured.

Air filtration systems do much more than standard HVAC air filters. The air filter that came equipped with your system is not actually designed to clean your indoor air. Rather, it is there to protect the inside components of your unit. A comprehensive air filtration system is necessary to truly improve your indoor air quality.